Hey guys, across our church, can we give God some praise for that adoption story one more time? I can't get over it, y'all. I can't get over it. And for all of our young ladies in the house, what Chelsea did is exactly right. If you don't like adoption, there's the door.
Okay, so that's a great way to intro your first date.
So I love that. Hey, we're going to be in Nehemiah chapter 10 today. If you have a copy of scripture, turn with me to Nehemiah chapter 10 as we continue in our series called Rebuild. God can rebuild what is seemingly irreparably broken. There are things that are so shattered in our lives, in our community, and yet God can rebuild these things.
So find Nehemiah 10 with me as you guys are doing that. I want to pump you up one more time if I can to serve in our Christmas services. All right. And here's why: to pull off a good service at Mercy Hill on the weekend. There's, you know, if you look around, guys, a church like Mercy Hill is almost 100% volunteer-led organization.
We do have a staff, okay? But I mean, our staff compared to the people that come on the weekend is just so, the leadership is in the volunteerism and the The service of the church. I don't know what your industry standard is, if you want to put it like that, okay? But you guys have things in your business and stuff like that. For us to be able to do what we do well in the way that you kind of think about it being well, like, man, there's lights and there's a band and there's kids workers and there's people helping you figure out where to sit and all that across all of our campuses.
It takes 20% of the people who attend to serve.
Now, I wish it was 100%, okay? But just to do it the right way, it takes 20% of people who attend to serve. If we hit that 20% number on a weekend, if we hit it for Christmas, then we're gonna be ready for what God is gonna do.
Now, what's the tragedy if we don't hit that 20%? Because I know this sounds, oh, this is corporate or something like that. Oh, no, I want you to think about this. I want you to think about somebody you love, or maybe even your own family. Maybe there's a nephew or a niece or a child, and that child grew up in the faith and then walked away in college.
We see this all the time, right? Walked away. Man, they're living in the world. They don't have the things of the Lord and faith on their mind. They're in that way for years.
And then life events begin to happen in 2025, and something begins to open them up. And all of a sudden, they reach back out to mom or dad in their mid-20s and they say, you know what? We're going to come with you guys to church on Christmas for the Christmas services.
Now, I want you to imagine the excitement and the exhilaration of family and friends who have prayed with them for a long time. And then I want you to imagine that they show up at Mercy Hill and there's absolutely nobody to greet them or tell them where to go. They walk over to check their kids in and they say, Oh, sorry, we've already filled our kids' quota. There's you know, we don't have enough room for your kids. You're just going to have to take them into the service, which we all know what that means.
It means that mom is going to be pretty distracted the whole time. Because she's having to deal with baby and all this kind of stuff, right? And so now they come in with that, and then you come in, and man, it's just a mess. The production team, you guys know there's an entire war room of like a dozen people who every service are back there somewhere and they're making all this work and all that stuff doesn't. You guys get where I'm going.
What a tragedy that would be. If someone that had been prayed for for years comes and we just were slap not ready for them. And I just can't stomach that. I know you can't stomach that. All right.
The magic number is 20%. And so I want to call you to say, hey, let's prepare the jars. We talk about that. God multiplies the oil. We prepare the jars.
Let's be ready for what he's going to do. I've seen this over and over at Mercy Hill. The amount of people we're prepared for is about the amount of people that God's going to bring.
Okay. He can do whatever he wants, but that just seems like that's about what always happens. Let me show you some numbers real quick. All right. Last year, we prayed that we would see over 5,000 people in attendance in our Christmas services.
And so we knew we needed 900 volunteers. And I came to the church and I pushed and I said, hey, we need about 900 volunteers or so. And we need you to. All right. We, you know, around that 20% number.
And we ended up seeing very close to that. We saw over 900 volunteers, 950, and we saw over 5,000 in attendance. Guys, this year we're praying. We really believe we could see over 7,000 souls come and worship.
Some of them hear the gospel for the first time. We're praying for over 7,000, which means we need roughly 1,400 volunteers to jump in and serve. All right. What does that mean? Serve one of the services and then come to one of the services with your family.
You can sign up to serve here on this right here at Mercy Hill/slash Christmas. That's where you RSVP as well. And so, man, that's my kind of my final push: jump in, serve. Man, let's pull our Christmas services off really well. All right, we're going to be in Nehemiah chapter 10 today, and we're going to talk about picking out what is best in our life and giving it to the Lord.
Some of that is financial, I understand, but primarily what we're talking about today is just our first invest in every area of our life.
Now, what I want to tell you. is that we intuitively know how to pick out what is first and best. Then we got to decide if we're actually going to do that and give that to the Lord. In our energy, in our relational talents, in our finances, in everything in our life, what is best is going to go to Him first. I hope your Thanksgiving was awesome.
I hope it was successful. Ours was successful. I define successful by meaning there was another year that me and Pastor Bobby deep-fried the bird without blowing our eyebrows off, okay?
So, no fires. It was awesome. We have had a few close calls over the years, I'll be honest. This was our bird this year. I don't know what yours looked like, but ours was deep-fried peanut oil goodness.
We also had the Gator bites, which is staple. Had to show you guys the Gator bites, okay, for Thanksgiving, a little non-traditional. But here's what I think is so funny about Thanksgiving: everybody's in the home, you got the kids all running around, everybody lines up for the food. You say, What are you thankful for? A blessing, or I don't know what your traditions are, okay?
But it is cool because when people start going through the line, you understand very quickly that humans know how to pick out what is best. As they're going through the line, all right? We intuitively know that's the juiciest piece of turkey. That's the best scoop of sweet potato casserole because it's got the most marshmallows on top.
Okay, that's the biggest piece of pie. Like, we know as we're walking through what to pick out. Here's what I'll confess for myself: some people are really good at picking out what is right, and good, and best, and first if they're gonna give it away. That is not me. I know how to pick out what is right and best and good and first if it's gonna be for me.
I know what I should pick for me. I know what I'll pick for you. But I know for me what I wanna pick. And humans know how to do this. We just see it, we understand.
All right. It is not, it is, it is not, it is very counterintuitive for us to think about picking out what is best. Even think about biblical time sacrifices, all right? If I got five little goats and you say which one you got to sacrifice, I'm not just naturally going to pick out the one that's the strongest with the most energy. Right, I'm a little was one of these sick is one of these a little lame, you know that this is how we naturally are and what we've got to learn today is what happens in the midst of revival and that's what's happened in Nehemiah 10 is that the people of God learn and want to pick out what is best.
Here's the big idea: God deserves our first and our best. I know that immediately we begin to think about finances here. I'm not talking about that right now. All right, I'm talking about our life. Here's a good non-financial example.
Some people view the weekend services with their first and best energy. It's the start to my week. Man, this is what I put that rock in first. We're gonna get there early. We're gonna stay late.
We're gonna have 100 conversations. Man, we're gonna serve. We're gonna be there, man. Like, this is the first rock. I'm trusting God that if I put my energy into this, That he's going to multiply what I need throughout the week so that I will be sustained.
That's one way to view it. The other way to view it, of course, is how some of us view it, which is: I have given my energy to every single thing under the sun this week. I have worked, we have done travel ball, we have carted the kids around, we've done schoolwork, college students, we've done the exams, we've given our energy to everything else. And if I have enough left over, then I'll come and drag myself in a little bit late. Sit through the service with some coffee, don't really worship with all that I have.
You see what I'm saying? Like, there's two different ways to attack. what God has put out before us. Either you bring him your best. or you bring him what is left over.
In the midst of revival, what the Bible calls us to see is that we can be a people and should be a people, that because of what God has done for him, we think about what he wants from us, we give that our first and best energy. God doesn't want any leftovers. Uncle Eddie said it best: save the neck for me, Clark. Remember? All right, now maybe for him, the neck is first and best.
But for most of us, we don't want to bring, our offering to the Lord isn't the neck. Right? It should be the best piece of me, the best piece of our life should go to him. That's what happens in revival. Look at Nehemiah 10 with me.
The rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple servants. And all who have separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the law of God, their wives, their sons, their daughters, this is fortifying the family here. All who have knowledge and understanding join with their brothers, their nobles, and enter into a curse and an oath to walk in God's law that was given by Moses, the servant of God.
Now, basically, what that's talking about is we're going to re-coven it. That's what the curse and the oath is. We're going to renew a covenant. It's not new, it's renew. We're going to renew it before the Lord.
And to observe and to do all the commands of the Lord our God and his rules and his statutes. That is a very important word. We're going to do all the commands. But then he goes into some specifics. We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons.
And if the peoples of the land bring in goods or grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath.
Okay, we're going to do marriage your way. We're going to do Sabbath rest your way or on a holy day. And we will forego the crops of the seventh year and the extraction of every debt. Verse 32. And he says, now we're going to give your way.
And we also take on ourselves the obligation to give yearly a third part of a shekel for the service of the house of the Lord.
Now, what I want to show you for just a minute, and we're going to get into some more specifics here about what it means to give God our first and best. Is just to see the big concept that in the midst of revival, we turn into a people who want what God wants in every area of our life.
Now, that doesn't mean that we do it perfectly all the time, right? But what we say in the deepest part of our heart is: I wanna follow, I wanna turn from our wicked ways, but I don't just wanna stop there, I wanna commit. To follow you in every area of my life that you have laid out for me. You could say it like this. Committing is part of repenting.
Okay, when the people are in revival, they are repenting of their sin, which means they're turning from it. But you don't just stop there. There is a part of repentance that is committing to the right things, not just stopping the wrong things.
Okay, so think about it like this. Repentance and commitment would go like this. I don't just stop the car that I'm heading headlong towards sin town.
Okay, I don't just hit the brakes. Instead, repentance truly is, yes, I've hit the brakes, I don't know I'm no longer desiring to go to Sin Town, but now I turn the car around, hit the gas, put the hammer down, and I'm heading right back to Obedienceville.
Okay, that's what I'm stopping that way, but I'm turning the car and now I'm going that way. And the people are saying here, we want all of it. Verse 29, he literally says, we want to walk in the curse and the oath. That Moses established at Mount Sinai. You can go back and read Exodus 19 and beyond.
All right, they're saying this is not a new covenant. We are going to talk new covenant a little bit today. It's not new, it's renew, the covenant that was very old. And we want all of God's plan to cascade into our life. We want to live under his lordship, in other words.
Now, I know some of us, when I hear the lordship of Christ or living under his lordship. Spiritual things begin to come to our mind.
Okay, we're going to pray, we're going to do a mission trip, we're going to give a tithe or something like that. Oh, no, I want you to understand this, when you start getting into we want to live under the law of the Lord, it's basically saying, God, I want to live under your laws, your wisdom. Whatever you got for me in revival, I want, and that's what I want to live in. I want to live all of my life before you. When I was going between my junior and senior year of college, you remember this, Anna, we were already getting married.
We were about to be married. And I was, you know, I had played football for 10 years of my life, and my body hurt.
Okay. It was 10 years of football and we were about to get married. All the other guys were, you know, were still single. And I was starting to think about ministry full-time. There was a lot going on.
Not to mention, I didn't love. The guy I was playing for at the time was a little hard to play for sometimes. It wasn't the guy that recruited me to come to our college. And so I was really debating whether I wanted to play football my last year at North Grayville College. And so I had a mentor at the time.
And I talked to the mentor and I said, hey, man, I really think I'm going to step away from football for this last season. And that was a big decision because I had a lot of influence on the team. And we've seen a lot of ministry fruit on the team. And, you know, it's a big, weighty decision. Division II football, one thing, but having influence on the team, that's another thing, right?
So it was a big decision.
Well, talk to me about it.
Well, we're already going to be married. Yeah, no, that's going to be interesting. You know, blah, blah, blah. Ministry, okay, well, you're going to have your whole life for that. Then I said, you know, I said, honestly, man, I just don't know that I want to play.
For the coach, another year of my life. I'm going to be married. I'm going to be, I don't know that I want to go kind of go through that. And I said, man, I don't know if I want to play for him. And he stopped me, and I'll never forget.
And he said, Andrew, ultimately, you don't play football for any man. You play football for the Lord. And that and that really radically affected me. Because it's like, hey man, give a tithe to God, got it. You know, go on a mission trip, pray, sing a song.
Wait, play football for God. How do you play football for the Lord? And then it begins to fall open where you realize, wait a minute, actually. There is no area of my life where I cannot bring glory to God through this thing. Like all of the things that he has put In front of me are things that I can reflect who he is and the life in his law and wisdom.
that he wants for us to live. Certainly I could play football for the glory of God. I could be an incredible teammate. I could be somebody who goes as hard as I can and leaves all my energy on the field because that's what it means to do something for the glory of God. Do it with all your might and a bunch of other things, right?
Like everything in our life, we can attack as if it's for us or as if it's for the Lord. In verse 29, if you go back and read it, they say, we want to do it all. We want all the commandments of the Lord, all of his rules, all of his statutes. We're not trying to skirt by on technicalities. We're not trying to live our life, make it guys, you know, under a guise like it's your ways.
No, we want it for you. My question for us is: are we thinking about life that way? Are you building the business for you? Are we trying to get the kids in this new school for our family? Are we parenting for us?
The word teaches us that we can live under his law and wisdom, and all of these areas of our life can be for him.
Now, all right, and this starts to get more, a little more in-depth here, okay?
Now, here's what happens. In verse 29, he says, We want to do all the commandments, right? We want to do it all. But then, starting in verse 30, he lists out three specific things. We want to do marriage your way, we want to do rest your way, and we want to do giving your way.
Now, the analytical in me, the analytical in you, is going to say the same thing, right?
Well, hey. If in verse 29, you've already committed that you wanna do everything the way that God wants you to. Then why did you from verse 30 to verse 32 pick out three particular things that clearly are already taken care of when you decide you want to do it all? Does that make sense? The all banner kind of takes care of these three things.
So, why mention them? And this is very important, all right? This is very important. Do you know why the children of Israel said, We want to do marriage and we want to do rest and we want to do tithing and giving your way, even though it had already been covered? Every commentator says the same thing.
It's because those three things must have been a particular snare for them. And here's what I want to tell you today. 2,500 years later, one thing remains. Humans don't fundamentally change all that much over time. If I said today, what are three things that are ensnaring us?
Of all the law, you know what I could say? who to marry, how to rest, and what to give. People don't change, man. And whether we're now all of our modern bias or all the way back then, these are three unique areas where it's hard for us to bring our first and best.
So the first thing they say is this. We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons. So the first thing is about, man, how we wanna live for God, bringing him our best. is who to marry.
Now marrying people from the other nations that had different religions was a constant snare for the people of God if you look back through their history. Through their history, they were told you're not supposed to marry outside of your own people because if you do, those people will get into you when you covenant with them. And next thing you know, you will be drawn away into all of these other religions.
Now, I got to make sure you understand, this is not racial, it's religious. It's not about who the nations are, it's about who the nations around Israel were going to worship. That's what it's about. We don't want you to be led away. I mean, you think about it like this: if the nations wanted to come in and begin to worship the one true living God, the door was wide open.
Think about Ruth. Ruth is one of the greatest figures in all the Old Testament, and she was a Moabitis. She was someone who was not originally from the people of God. The door was wide open. She was the great-grandmother of David for crying out loud.
So, this is not about religion, it's not about race, and it's not about who the people are. It's about their religion and who they worship. And God is saying to the people from very early on, they're recommitting to it here in verse 30. Don't marry those people you will start to worship as they do. Exodus 34 says it like this.
He's basically saying, if you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods. and make your sons whore after their gods. That's what it says in Exodus 34. If you marry their daughters and their daughters come in to your people, you will end up being carried away. They will whore after these idols, and your sons will whore after these idols.
And by the way, I fully understand that's not a very politically correct verse of the Bible, and the Bible doesn't care. It don't about our modern sensibilities. This is truth. And the truth, okay, so what do you say, what does that mean for us today? Because we're under the new covenant, like we're not all the same nation.
I mean, you know, the nation of Israel was like one people that were a theocracy, and there's a lot different now under the new covenant. We have the most diverse movement in all of modern or all of you know world history, and there's people from every tribe and tongue that are coming into the faith of Jesus Christ, and it's a beautiful thing. And how do we think about okay? The way that we think about this now in the new covenant is, man, we are not to marry outside of our faith. 2 Corinthians 6:14 tells us, don't be unequally yoked.
Unequally yoked is an agrarian idea. You don't put a massive ox that is strong and six foot at the withers and all of this with a little donkey that has no strength, is half the size. If you put them together, everything about the work is going to be wonky and crazy and may even be injury prone. You don't unequally yoke them. In the same way, we don't marry outside of our faith.
Listen, if you are a young person, if you're a late high schooler, certainly college age, young adult, young professional, you've got to hear what I'm telling you right now. Marriage is a covenant. And if you covenant with someone. Who is not covenanted to the same God that you are, you are heading for trouble. You are heading for a disaster.
I want you to think about the Christian view of marriage. Man, it's more than emotion. It's more than a fleeting sexual desire. It is a promised partnership to do life together. in every phase.
That talk, I mean, when you think about how we're gonna raise kids, you think about the story we saw of adoption, how we're gonna think about that, how we're gonna think about money. How we're going to think about sexuality. There are so many things that come. If you don't have a shared authority, there will never be unity. In the way that God has intended the unity of marriage.
Now, here's the thing.
Some of us are like, yeah, that makes sense. I mean, if you marry within your faith, you're probably going to have more shared values. And I understand why God would do that.
Okay, then why does the Christian church struggle with it so bad? Why? And it's not that we don't understand it intellectually. We're like, yeah, that would be right. I think that would probably make a lot of sense, like your shared values and all that.
Then why do we struggle with it? Here's why. Because people get a little bit older, young people listen. You get a little bit older, you start, and all of a sudden, you're like, man, I don't see that dude from Song of Solomon anywhere around me. And guys are like, I'm looking around, like, I don't see a Proverbs 31 woman right here right now.
So maybe I'm a little more afraid of being alone. Or maybe I don't really want this season of singleness.
So instead of waiting for God's best, I jump. Into a relationship that is unequally yoked. And I'm gonna tell you, that is not giving God your first and best.
So we're, hey, midst of revival. Nehemiah 10, we're coming under his lordship. We want to do it all. First part, who to marry. Second part, how to rest.
All right? Look at what it says in verse 31. And if the peoples of the land bring in goods or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or on a holy day. And we will forego the crops of the seventh year and the extraction of every debt. Now, what we say, hey, who to marry?
Second, how to rest. You want to be convicted? Let me ask you this. How tired are you?
Okay, I mean, if you want to get convicted pretty fast, let's start. God's people have always had trouble with who to marry, and they have always had trouble with how to rest.
Now the people here are, this is important, the people here are having to figure out an interpretation of the law. We know that we're not supposed to sell and do work among each other on the Sabbath day. But they were skirting by on a technicality. They're not going to trade with each other because they know that's doing work. You're not supposed to do that on the Sabbath for them.
Now, we're under a new covenant. Sabbath is a little different for us. We have a deeper rest now, okay? But for them, Sabbath, I'm not supposed to do work. We're not going to do that with each other.
But now there's all these foreigners in their midst, and they're like, wait a minute, I'm not going to sell to my brother, but can I buy and sell from these people who aren't of the same faith as we are? And what they end up deciding is no. They say, no, we're not going to do that. We don't want, this is the point, this is very important. We don't just want the technicality of the law.
You can say it like this: the people aren't just committing to the law, they're committing to the spirit of the law. The spirit of the law is, hey, we are a people that want to put ourselves under all of God's commands. We want to be a people who do everything that he wants. We're not trying to figure out a technicality so that we can still continue to kind of operate the way that we want to operate secretly, even though it's maybe not the best thing. We want the spirit of the law.
The spirit of the law is: have a positive view of rest. And that positive view of rest kind of step into that. and own it for all that it is. Y'all, the pull on God's people not to rest has always been strong. Why?
I already said it. I'm reading a book right now called Same as Ever. All right, it's the same guy who wrote the book Psychology of Money. And it's so funny. He says, You want to predict things in the future?
Impossible. What we need to do is look back and look at humanity and say, what are the things that never change? And I thought, hey, when you look back at what never changes, you know what you find when you think about humans? We all know it. Time is money.
Why don't the people want to rest? It's real simple. If I make $10 a day. Then in seven days, I made seventy. But if I take one of them days off, then I only made 60.
And I got to figure out if I'm willing to trust God with 60, that 60 is better. Right? That a sixted rested Before him is better than the 70 that I could make if I go out there and it's hard. Y'all, in the economy of God's kingdom, we all even know this. If we can trust Him with it, we kind of know this in our mind.
Y'all, in the economy of God's kingdom, A rested 60 can end up being multiplied better than a tired 70 anyway.
Now we sort of know that, but it doesn't make it any easier.
Sometimes it's that extra 10. That is where we're really selling our soul away, right? And what the Bible is telling us here is: no, these people said, we don't want the technicality of whether we can skirt by. We want the whole sandwich, man. We want all of what God has for us.
Let me ask you: we're under a new covenant now. This ain't about whether you can cut your grass on Sundays, okay? This is not what Sabbath is about now. The idea for Sabbath now is, are we a people who can rest? Are we a people who, hey, guys, you're home, but are you really home?
Your body's at home, but your mind's at the office. Is this honoring to God? Are you a person who takes all your vacation or you cash it in at the end of the year or it just goes on anyway? Why? Because you can't have the thought of, man, I don't know what they would do without me.
I can't ever take any time off. You know, is there an intentional time on the weekend that you let your body and your mind and your nervous system rest and replenish? That's kind of the idea that we have here. Are we willing to step back and say, God, you have created me? in a way that is different than you.
I have to lay down and close my eyes at night. I've got to sleep. Are there intentional rhythms of rest in your day, in your week, in your month, and in your ear, and in your year? All right. Verse 32.
We also take on ourselves the obligation to give yearly a third. This is a little bit of a longer passage, all right?
So just try to hang in. A part of shekel for the service of the house of our God. For the showbread, the regular grain offering, the regular burnt offering, the Sabbaths, the new moons, the appointed feasts, the holy things, and the sin offerings, to make atonement for Israel and for all the work of the house of God. They're talking about bringing, right, their tithes and bringing their things for the house of the Lord. We the priests, the Levites, and the people have likewise cast lots for the wood offering to bring it into the house of God.
According to our fathers' houses at times appointed year by year to burn on the altar of the Lord our God as it is written in the law. We obligate, hey, I'm gonna tell you what. I want you to write, if you got a Bible, if you got a physical copy of the Bible, circle that word obligate in verse 34.
Now, if you're looking at a phone, I don't know what you're supposed to do, okay? But if you can circle it, you know, circle it up, hey, we obligate ourselves to bring the first fruits of our ground and the first fruits of all fruit of every tree year by year to the house of the Lord. Also, to bring to the house of our God to the priests who minister in the house of our God.
Now, this is interesting. The firstborn of our sons and of our cattle, as it is written in the law, and the firstborn of our herds and of our flocks. Look, I know that's kind of a long, long deal, okay? A couple of things I want you to mention, see in it. Number one, this idea of obligate.
Circle that word. What does obligate mean? Here's what it means: remember, we want to put all of our life under the lordship of Christ. who to marry, how to rest, now they're talking about what to give. They are obligated to give of what God has given to them.
That word obligate. has the tone of compulsion in it. Obligate means I have almost bound myself legally to do it.
Now, what's funny about this again is if you go through and read this and you try to match it up with all the Old Testament laws. you're going to see that some of this lines up with the Old Testament laws.
Some of it is new.
Some of it is not technicality.
Some of it is we want to Make sure that the house of the Lord is supplied. My point is, this is really going into more of a first fruits idea, not a law idea. That's what he even said. We will bring our first fruits. Not our leftovers, not the things that are left over, and we don't even want them anymore.
Instead, we want to bring our best. And I just got to stop and just say this. There have been many New Testament Christians who are like, yeah, yeah, but that's Old Testament. We're under the new covenant now. Under the new covenant.
we are given greater reason to go beyond any of the laws in the Old Testament. When it comes to moral laws, all right, I'm not talking about civil and ceremonial. But we're talking about the things that are from the heart. We have such a good reason.
Now, if somebody's like, well, I don't, I'm freed from the tithe. Yeah, you're free to go beyond the tithe. We're free to go well beyond that now because we have a heart that overflows in generosity, and that is just oozing off the pages of the revival of Nehemiah chapter 10. What we are being called to, church, is to give out our very best. Don't save the neck for God, okay?
Instead, we are to give our very best. It's so funny. Anna and I, humans know how to give the best, okay? Or take the best. Me and Anna are so different in this.
So, you guys know, man, we get a cow butchered every year, and so we have a lot of meat in the freezers. And when people come in from out of town, family, good friends, Anna always wants to bless them with some of the Hopper Farm beef, okay? And it's a great little gift, and I love the idea of it until I look out, and she just basically has a laundry basket full of steaks. All right, I'm talking ribeye sirloin. And I'm like, Anna, you just gave them $175 worth of meat, okay?
Let me pick next time. I'll pick next time because there's some tongue in there, okay? There's a kidney. They gave me the liver. I hear the tongue makes great tacos, okay?
So I listen. I know how to pick out the best for me, and I know what I want to pick for you if it's for somebody else, right? I'll take the ribeye. You can have the tacos de lingua with the tongue, all right? That that's all good.
This is what the Bible is trying to get us to see. We normally can pick out the best for us. But can we be a people who say, you know what, actually, God, what you have given to me is so overwhelming. I want to pick out the best. Of my time, of my talent, and my treasure.
And that is what I want to bring to you. Here's the application for this weekend, y'all. Bring God your very best. And I wanna try to zero in on this concept of motivation today, because I want you to think. Nehemiah 10, midst of revival.
These people have been brought back into their land. They've been given a city and a wall. They've been given a leader in Nehemiah. Man, they've been given rest from the enemies that are around them. They have the opportunity to flourish.
They've been given the law. They've been given the very word of God. They've been given a renewed relationship with God. All of these things are unimaginable blessings. And for that, what do they say?
They open their hands. We want to do marriage your way. We want to do rest your way. And we want to give your way.
Now if God blessed them with that and it unlocked their heart in those ways Then here's what I want to tell you. How in the world should our heart be unlocked on our side of the cross when we realize what he has given to us? Because God has given us an unimaginable gift. I mean, just a gift that in a gift of his son, he has brought us in. You know, these people are like, man, we have a city, we have a wall, we have a leader, we have a flourishing nation.
What about us? What Jesus has given to us has brought us into all of those things and so much more. You know, the gospel is so embedded in this story. You may have missed it when I read it. Certainly piqued my eyebrows when I read it the first time.
Look what it says in verse 36. Talking about bringing our best. Also, to bring to the house of our God, to the priests who minister in the house of our God. The firstborn. of our sons and our cattle, presumably for sacrifice.
Now that now this is you can't just read past it like that It's like, wait, wait a minute here. Bring our sons to be sacrificed. Actually, one of the great differences between Israel and the nations around them was that they did not practice child sacrifice. You know, child sacrifice is one of those things that we see rampant in the Old Testament, and in fact, it brought on the annihilation of the people in the land, the promised land. You know, if you're in high school right now or college, I'm going to tell you, you guys end up going to one of these larger universities and some slick professor tries to open a Bible and say, look, this is why we can't believe, is because God sent his people to annihilate the peoples of the Canaan land.
You've got to be equipped to be like, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. Actually, those people in the land... were sacrificing their children to demons. And apparently in the economy of God's kingdom, You sacrifice your kids to demons enough, and one day he's had enough. And one day you get wiped out.
Now that's what happened in the Old Testament.
So when you look at this, you say, wait a minute. Verse 36, it's saying that the people of God were to bring their sons to be sacrificed. How do I make sense of this? Ah. God put the gospel in the very beginning in so many ways.
You see it so beautifully here. Numbers chapter 18 tells us, oh, yeah, you were to bring your firstborn child. You were to bring the firstborn son to God. Those kids are the Lord's. They are to be sacrificed to Him in a sense.
But because of our Lord, His grace and mercy, what he says is, oh no, I have baked into the law an opportunity for you to buy them back. You bring them for me, but you pay the price and they come back into your family. This is the gospel before we even knew where the gospel was in the Bible, right? Because one day there would be another son who was given, Jesus Christ Himself, when God would give His best. And why did He give His best?
He gave His best. And he gave Jesus So that Jesus would be the price for for all of our sons and daughters to come back into a relationship with God again. Yes, you could pay the money and have your son come back into your family. Jesus Christ, you could say it like this. paid the price to redeem the people of God.
And bring us back into his family once again. Listen, if that is true, Man, if you and I in our sin don't deserve to be in the people of God. We deserve hell. We deserve the wrath of God to be poured out upon us. And yet Jesus Christ gave his life to buy us back.
into his family. Doesn't that begin to open our minds and our hearts and our hands to want to give our first fruits? For some of you today, I would say this. Giving your first fruit to God is giving your heart to Him. Admit your sin, believe in what he has done, and confess him as the Lord of your life.
I pray you do that for the very first time today you become a Christian. For others of us, though, that are believers, This is a gut check moment for us to say, wait a minute. Is the Lord getting what is first and best in my life? Is he getting my first fruits? Listen to me.
Something is getting your first fruits. I mean, it is. We're going to give that stuff away to something. Are we giving away to the Lord? Examples include.
Man. Am I bringing my first and best on the weekend?
So these services with my brothers and sisters in Christ at all of our campuses, this is true of every one of us. If I bring in my best. or am I bringing my leftovers? When I start looking at my calendar for 2026, I don't know how many of you guys are in that season, okay? Am I bringing my best?
You know, the back of that multiply book shows you a bunch of dates that are very important for our church family. I can't tell you how many families in a year this happens. It's like, well, where were your kids at Kids Week? Oh, we planned a vacation that week. Why?
Why? You know what happened? Leftovers. What happened is, we put all the rocks in that we wanted, our family stuff and all the stuff. And then at the end of that, we said, well, oh, yeah, there's some other things with the church that are important.
We'll see if those work. Of course, the other way to bring a first fruit It is to say, hey, actually, student camp and kids week and making sure we're here to serve on Easter and Christmas next year and all the things, all the stuff. Hey, those things are going in first. And everything else will go around it because that's what it means to bring my first and to bring my best. Guys, when we wake up in the morning, what's the first thing that we go to?
I've been convicted of this many times in my life where I get in habits. of going to email before I go to the Word, right? And or are going are we setting time away? What's getting our first energy? our first fruit of the day.
Are we in the Word? Are we praying before the Lord? Man, before we're diving into these other things in our life, this is my point. It's what is first and what is best. And finally, guys, as we think about this, man, it is true that we think about this with our finances as well.
This is a huge weekend in the life of our church because we fund the ministry for 2026 really in two ways. We fund it by what is given in 2026, just a week in, week out. I understand. But we also fund it by what happens at the multiply offering in 2025. And we'll fund 2027 with the multiply offering in 2026, if that makes sense.
All right. So it's really two ways, not just one. And as we come to the end of this year, man, I just really want to ask the question: are we willing to give our first fruits or are we going to give what's left over? At all of our campuses, now I'm going to ask you guys, I know some of you are brand new, we're just going to talk about this. This is basically a mover today.
It's a commitment card today, all right? I'm going to ask everybody to get this envelope out for just a moment. At all of our campuses as well, just get it out. I'm going to show you a couple things about it. Man, this uh You know, this thing doesn't feel.
Like it weighs very much, you know? but it signifies a lot of weight in our life. And what we have an opportunity today is to say, hey, in the month of December. We're going to give a first fruits offering.
Now, for some of you that are brand new, this might, I'm not, listen, maybe you're like your first time ever today. I'm not gonna tell you not to participate. I don't know what the Lord's gonna tell you to do. I certainly am gonna tell you this is more of a family thing.
Okay, so you don't, I'm not, there's no pressure, all right? But if you are, if you've been around for a while, you know then this might be the time for you to say hey you know what i'm in I'm not going to ride the merry-go-round without pushing like everybody else. And so I'm in. And this is my first gift is going to be Multiply 2025 to fund the vision for 26. You guys know the vision: Fortify the Family.
Couldn't be more timely. Marriage conference, chosen coming out, you know, chosen series, resetting goals, church at the ballpark. You guys have seen all the stuff. All those things next year, I want in on that. I'm going to help fund it.
Some of you are brand new, some of you have been around for a while. A first fruit for you might look like this is going to be the time that we pull out of stored assets. Man, there's capacity in this church, no doubt, for five, six, seven-figure gifts. It will fuel things like church, you know, the retreat center. It will fuel things that we have coming up next year in ways that are unimaginable.
Maybe today is the day. But here's what I want to tell you. All right. Maybe first, it's not about the ministry that's gonna happen. Maybe it's just about the heart posture.
God owns a cattle on a thousand hills, he don't need our money. He can do it any kind of way he wants to. But some kind of way he has put it and baked it all in. that what takes us the deepest takes the ministry the farthest. Maybe today is a time for you to go super deep.
All right. There's two options on this card I want you to see. The first option is very simple. Hey, I came ready for this. Or the first option is: I'm committing to give this by the end of the month.
That's what our family will do. We didn't bring a check today, okay? We're going to commit to give towards, you know, by the end of this month. And we're going to give a double, triple tie. Maybe that could be something you do, maybe something out of stored assets, okay?
But that's going to be there. The other option is: maybe some of you guys, I know one brother at the High Point campus, he was very excited about this. Like, the whole, you know, have his whole family, like, they came ready that day. And maybe that's where you are. You came ready that day.
You're not just gonna go home and give online later today. You came today.
Well, then you can enclose it in this gift. Maybe some of you are like, man, I'm still wrestling with this. I don't know exactly what we're going to give, but we're going to do something. That's fine. Then you just need to write, man, I'm in.
I'm in. I don't know yet, but I'm in.
Some of you guys are saying, maybe say, hey, we already gave our gift for this month and our above and beyond and all that. That's great too. If you did that, I want you just to write that, already gave, or something like that. It's more about just a moment that we're going to have together, okay? And then what's going to happen is that we're going to have a chance to stand up.
But as we're singing And we're going to have a chance together at all of our locations, at all of the stages, at all of our campuses, man, to come forward as a family. And pray over these things and put these things in a bucket together here. And so I want to give you the opportunity to do that. Here's what we're going to do first: hey, take a minute, minute, minute and a half, and just reflect and pray. I've been in moments like this in our own family where we came in with something and God changes the number on the spot.
Maybe he gives you some clarity. Maybe you decide: am I in? Am I in? And am I not in? You know, you just make that decision, whatever it is.
You guys take a minute, minute and a half, reflect on that. If you want to prepare this, you know, go ahead and write on it, write it out. And then we're going to have an awesome moment together where we get a chance to commit for 20, yeah, multiply offering for 2025. I'll come back out in a minute and pray.
